He's met his match in Anthony Burgess' 1962 novel "A Clockwork Orange," which Stanley Kubrick turned into a film in 1971. After the film was released, Burgess wrote a stage version of his book. The show opens Friday.

"It has a lot to say about the nature of free will and trying to find morality in a world where we don't have such clear-cut right and wrong," Lee says. "It's a literary classic."

The novel is set in a dystopian future in which youth gang violence prevails: Kids plot and attack people on a nightly basis. Alex (played by Christian O'Shaughnessy), the main character, goes to prison and takes part in an experimental treatment in which he's conditioned against violence. After his release, he encounters society in a very different and unsettling way.

"It is a strange future, though not too hard to imagine - a confluence of Cold War powers, youth culture uninhibited, an all-consuming state and an apathetic populace," Lee writes in the show's press release.

The novel and film differ, Lee says. The play is much closer to the novel, which included a 21st chapter in British editions of the book, Lee says. That chapter wasn't included in the Kubrick film.

"There's an epilogue in the story, so it goes full circle and gives Alex a decent arc of the character," Lee says.

Earlier this year, Theatre 'd Art lost their performance space at 128 N. Nevada Ave., due, in part, to noise complaints from other building tenants, Lee says. For the run of "A Clockwork Orange," they'll perfom at the Subterranean Nightclub downtown.

It will once again be an immersive show, much like last summer's "Paradise Lost," where the audience moves to follow the action. There are 22 scenes in the play, Lee says, and they'll be done in different parts of the nightclub. Some seating will be available.